So Mathieu Perreault thought he was ready to go, and his coach didn’t.

What gives?

The Winnipeg Jets forward told anyone who’d listen going into Game 4 that he’d been medically cleared to play Thursday’s critical playoff game against Nashville.

Yet, Perreault and his beard watched the 2-1 Jets loss from high in the press box.

And now the Jets are in a gnarly best-of-three without home-ice advantage.

Having your coach pull rank in the regular season is one thing.

In the playoffs, another entirely.

“Yeah, it’s a bit more frustrating, for sure,” Perreault said, Friday. “It’s hard to watch. When you win, it’s awesome, but a game like (Friday) night when you end up losing — it’s really hard to watch. Yeah, playoffs it definitely makes a bit of a difference.

“I felt like I could have played, yes. But it’s not my call obviously, so it comes down to coach’s decision. So I let them know I felt good, I wanted to play, and there’s nothing else I can do.”

Now, Perreault’s been colder than Winnipeg in January since, well, February, with just one goal in his last 24 games.

That includes the first game of the playoffs against Minnesota, when he got cranked and suffered a shoulder injury. He hasn’t played, since.

But whether he’s scoring or not, every Jets fan and their dog know what No. 85 would have brought to Thursday’s game.

Something they sorely lacked for the last half of the contest.

“Energy, I guess,” Perreault said, whacking the nail right where it counts. “A little bit of energy could have maybe helped the team, so hopefully I can come in and do that and try to get in on their D and just do what Mathieu Perreault does.”

Maurice didn’t want any part of the debate (controversy?), using humour to attempt to defuse it.

“Really bad attitude in the morning skate,” Maurice said of the reason for scratching Perreault. “And that’s it for me, man. We’ll see if he brings a better attitude tomorrow.”

Being asked how Perreault would make his team a tougher matchup for the Predators only pushed Maurice from comedy to absurdity.

“Wonderful hair,” he said.

The reporter, not missing a beat, asked how Perreault’s hair might allow him to force turnovers in the Preds’ zone.

“Only if he loses them in his hair,” the coach said.

Now, this isn’t the first time a player says he’s ready and his coach says he isn’t.

Nevertheless, given the importance of the last game, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher, you could say.

FINAL EXAMS STILL AHEAD

These young Jets have passed their early post-season exams, but they haven’t had one quite like what’s coming in Game 5, Saturday – series tied, 2-2, two losses from elimination, in an enemy barn.

You might be surprised what Maurice says matters the most, the deeper you go into the playoffs.

“Simplicity,” he said. “The game becomes simpler. So that’s the whole 82-game idea: define your game, define your game, define your game. So that you can get the very basics of the game.

“It goes to another level,” he predicted. “The next game is extremely important. I expect it to be definitely at another level for intensity and compete and everything like that. It’s a tough building to play in. Their fans are great. But we’ve been able to win there before.”

RINSE AND REPEAT

From the Preds room comes the feeling they figured something out in Winnipeg, Game 4.

“(Thursday) was good for us to see the way we have to play if we want to beat this team,” defenceman Yannick Weber said. “Finally we’re able to have a consistent effort, the way we want to play. We know what works now, and it’s going to be awesome to be at home in front of our fans… so have the same mindset.”

Being at home has to help the Preds, just like it helps the Jets. Nashville rode the momentum from its home crowd all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, last season.

“We saw last year how important home-ice was,” Weber said. “There’s a reason why we wanted to finish first in the league so we would have home-ice through the whole playoffs.”

SET YOUR BODY-CLOCKS

Game 5 marks the same late start as Game 4, but Maurice didn’t think his team was thrown off by the 8:30 p.m. start on Thursday.

“We’ve checked with players,” he said. “We do a kind of monitoring, daily, on where they think their bodies are at, their energy levels, some other things we try to track. Felt good. There wasn’t that fatigued feeling.”

THE LAST WORD

“It felt like a basketball game, the last two minutes.” –Nashville’s Ryan Johansen on the nail-biting finish to Thursday’s game.

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